Qtum (QTUM)

Table of content

• What is Qtum?
• History of the creation of Qtum
• Principle of operation
• Wallet for QTUM
• QTUM quotes

What is Qtum?

Qtum is a project based on Blockchain technology, the main goal of which is to create a universal Value Transfer Protocol (VTP). It has open source code and can be said to be a combination of Bitcoin and Ethereum. More specifically, the project combines the Bitcoin transaction model that enables micropayments and the creation of smart contracts and the development of decentralized applications, as in Ethereum. Qtum is mainly aimed at business and institutional clients. The project itself is registered in Singapore, while its possibilities are already used by companies from South Korea and China. Qtum has a cryptocurrency with the same name, which allows billing and exchange in the blockchain. 

History of the creation of Qtum

The project started on December 19, 2016. Its creators are Chin Patrick from China and Jordan Earls from America. The whitepaper was not published until February 9, 2017, after which the founders started to raise funds for their idea. They chose the most popular way at the time and organized the ICO of the project. The Initial Coin Offering lasted from March 16 to April 15, 2017 and allowed to collect 15.6 million dollars. The pool of issued tokens was then divided as follows: 51% went to public sale, 20% went to creators and developers, and the remaining 29% was allocated to the development fund of Qtum-based applications. Then, on September 8, 2017, the first revision of the Qtum main network was released, which meant the project moved to its own Blockchain. 

Principle of operation

The whole idea of Qtum is to combine the UTXO (Unspent Transaction Outputs) transaction model used in Bitcoin with EVM, ie a virtual Ethereum machine that allows you to create smart contracts and decentralized applications. As a result, Blockchain Qtum is compatible with implementations prepared for Bitcoin, such as Segwit or Lightning Network, while allowing the creation of Turing-complete smart contracts, like Ethereum itself. In addition, the team is constantly working on its own programming interface called x86VM, which will enable the writing of smart contracts in the most popular languages, such as C ++ or Phyton, while maintaining the compatibility of smart contracts with EVM. 

Due to the need for scalability and low energy consumption, Qtum operates in the PoS consensus algorithm. This means that there are no miners, and transactions are approved by nodes, which in return for holding and freezing their funds receive remuneration for confirming transactions. The block time is 120 seconds and the block reward is 4 QTUM with transaction fees in a specific block. Since the fee model was taken from Ethereum, each operation requires the so-called gas fee, which is calculated in QTUM. The most popular type of smart contracts in Qtum is QRC20 based on its concept of Ethereum, as can be deduced from the name. 

Wallet for QTUM

The basic official wallet is QTUM Core, it is a desktop wallet available for devices with both Windows and MacOS and Linux. QTUM CORE is a so-called full node wallet, which means that it downloads and synchronizes the entire Blockchain and becomes a full node. Additionally, QTUM CORE enables cryptocurrency staking. The project owners have also prepared the QTUM Wallet mobile application, where you can also store your Qtum. In addition, the Electrum desktop wallet and Bitpie multi-wallet allows you to store QTUM coins. From the Ledger Nano, S and Blue hardware wallets via the Ledger Live application, you can store QTUM. When choosing a wallet, remember that QTUM coins are no longer based on the Ethereum blockchain. 

QTUM quotes

Total QTUM coins are 102,779,652, of which 97,060,244 have been mined. The highest ever price (ATH) was January 7, 2018 at $ 106.88. Currently, Qtum ranks 60 among cryptocurrencies in terms of Market Cap. QTUM is listed on 64 exchanges. Its daily turnover is approximately $ 162 million, one-third of which is traded on the EXX exchange. In addition, QTUM can be found on large exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, Kraken, Poloniex, Bitfinex, while the last two turnover is almost negligible.

The coin supply is not fixed, new tokens can be mined with block reward halving every four years from the initial block reward subsidy of 4.0 QTUM per block, going through seven halvings to eventually reaching zero by year 2045, when the maximum supply will reach 107,822,406 QTUM.